If the aim this week was to put Iran in the crosshairs, the Bush administration barely needed to lift a finger, it seems. People were climbing over one another to denounce president Ahmadinejad and none so much as those who invited him to speak at Morningside campus. Is it possible that his invitation was the result of some kind of clerical error? Perhaps they meant to invite some other president – someone committed to democracy, the rule of law, and the whims of the Bush clan, like “president” Pervez Musharraf. Whatever the case may be, Columbia was ground zero in the clash of civilizations for a few hours, with Ahmadinejad being decried as the “Hitler of the Middle East”. (Hmmm… that has a familiar ring to it.) Hell, over there, you can hardly take a bath without six or seven Hitlers jumping in with you. I guess the standard for Hitlerianism has lapsed somewhat over the past few years. Used to be you had to, you know, invade someone. Now it’s just saying a few laughably absurd things, like there are no gays in Iran.

Much is made of the Iranian leader’s propensity towards denial of the Holocaust, but he’s hardly alone in the middle east on that score. As Norm Finkelstein has pointed out, Bush’s favorite Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas has something like a degree in Holocaust denial. Frankly, I find it to be a bit like claiming the sun is a figment of our collective imaginations. Has there ever been more evidence of a crime than what there is with respect to Nazi extermination programs? (The “9/11 truth” movement is a mild version of this goofiness.) Still, people are encouraged to focus on Ahmadinejad’s comments because he has also had harsh words for Israel. Of course, most of what he has said has been in the context of quite public ruminations by both the U.S. and Israel about bombing the living piss out of Iran. That bit usually gets left out of mainstream press reports.

When thinking about the Iranian president, it’s best to remember a few things. First, as I’ve mentioned here before, he is not the supreme leader of Iran. The presidency of Iran is a constitutionally limited office, answerable to the ruling council of mullahs and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. Second, Iran does not have the capability to destroy either America or Israel, but both of these powers have the ability to destroy Iran. Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons and effective delivery systems; the U.S. has thousands, plus large military deployments across the border on both sides of Iran and in the Persian Gulf. This would tend to encourage the Iranians to, well, start building bombs. (One would think Ahmadinejad would be roundly criticized for not doing so.) Finally, to the extent that Iran is interested in building nuclear weapons (which they don’t appear to be, it should be said), it’s as a deterrent to the forces arrayed against them. That is the only use for nuclear weapons, frankly. And even if he were irrational enough to want to provoke a massive retaliation that would destroy his entire country, he wouldn’t have the authority to order it.

Our dear leader, on the other hand, has his shaky finger on the button. And as people are decrying Ahmadinejad, Bush has turned the U.S. Air Force base in Ballad, Iraq into the second busiest airport in the world, dropping as many bombs in Iraq so far this year as were dropped in the previous three. Morality starts at home, folks.

luv u,

jp

Well, it didn’t take long for the latest Iraq fantasy to start falling apart. The so-called “Anbar Awakening”, trumpeted by General David Petraeus as such an amazing success, is every bit the fraud you might have expected by this point. It took some intrepid reporting by people like Big Noise Films (featured on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!) to get a closer look at what is actually happening in that unhappy province, and it isn’t pretty. But then, ethnic cleansing never is. It seems some of the enlightened tribal leaders with whom we are now “allied” led an effort to drive more than 14,000 Shi’ite families out of Anbar and into some pretty miserable looking shantytowns on the outskirts of Baghdad – maybe 130,000 people in all expelled from their homes by the very people we’re glad-handing. Did our people know of this? A little hard to imagine they didn’t, since in one of the communities featured in the Big Noise report, the U.S. military group was headquartered in an abandoned Shi’a family household.

Here are the reports…

Part one

Part two

I must admit, I felt a little more than suspicious (irony) when the U.S. commander on the ground in the Big Noise piece referred to some of these ex-insurgents as “freedom fighters.” Last time we used that terminology was in reference to our terrorist armies in Afghanistan and Central America during the Reagan years. Of course, the reality of Iraq is much more complex than our government is willing to admit. Many of the people in Anbar played both sides of the conflict from the very beginning, alternately working for the U.S. occupation and fighting with the insurgents. (Patrick Graham’s report in the June 2004 Harper’s is enlightening on this point.) When the situation deteriorated into the current hell-disaster, it likely became a harder fence to cross over. The “Anbar Awakening” is something like a return to what was happening in those early days. Still plenty of killing going on – it’s just distributed a bit differently. And, of course, the poorest Iraqis are taking the biggest hits.

From Bush’s perspective – and that of a good many other people in American political culture – that in itself wouldn’t keep Iraq from being a success of sorts. Leaders of both the Republicans and the Democrats claim to be looking for signs of “progress”, meaning the emergence of effective leadership in Iraq that is both hostile to neighboring Iran and more generally compliant with our priorities in the region. Note that I didn’t say “popular” – that’s never really been the standard for success. They only reluctantly agreed to elections in 2004 when Ayatollah Sistani insisted upon it. In his own ham-fisted way, Bush underlined this fact at his news conference the other day, complaining that everyone is asking “Where is Mandela?” Aside from the peculiar fact that junior appears to think Nelson Mandela is dead, Bush is telegraphing his administration’s lack of enthusiasm for the emergence of a truly popular Iraqi leader, as well as its skepticism that such a person exists. (Let’s also forget the fact that, remarkable as he is, Mandela was kept alive by a massive popular movement that was itself the catalyst for change, and not always in a peaceful way.)

In any case, the Bush team (and Harry Reid) would really prefer Saddam – that is, pre-Kuwait Saddam, friend to the west, hated by his own people. That’s what puts the “suck” in success.

luv u,

jp